Checking Up On Resident Evil

Resident Evil has made some rather baffling choices over the years, from the weird Gameboy Color game to the two separate rail shooter sub-series. In recent years, the series began to be better known for these strange decisions than for its ability to scare. This came to a head when Resident Evil 6 was widely seen as a flaming wreck which had derailed the entire main Resident Evil series. After a long silence, Resident Evil 7 came out and revived interest by returning the series to its horrific roots. However, Capcom has recently started in with the odd decisions in handling the series which have me wondering what, if anything, they’ve learned from the success of Resident Evil 7.

The first of these decisions is the upcoming Gold Edition of Resident Evil 7. Now, this wouldn’t be the series’ first Gold Edition, since RE5 had a similar re-release, but there is a certain question of why. Yes, Resident Evil 7 was a popular, well-received game. However, its player base didn’t end up lasting very long. The game on its own didn’t have much replay value, and much of the DLC content ended up feeling either completely pointless or like it should have been included in the base game. So now we’re getting a re-release of the game, with all of the DLC included, presumably at the full $60 price. If you bought the Season Pass for the game’s DLC, you may have realized that this announcement has been made before the final DLC has even been released. Instead, what Capcom has decided to do is release the DLC and the Gold Edition simultaneously. So you won’t even know all of what you’re paying extra for. Perhaps even worse is that one of the final DLC packs appears to be a much more action-oriented bit starring series mainstay Chris Redfield… much like the poorly received fifth and sixth entries of the Resident Evil series.

The other strange decision is the re-release of Resident Evil: Revelations for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Now don’t get me wrong, the Revelations sub-series is pretty good. However, this is an HD remastering of a hand-held game from five years ago. More than that, it’s the second such HD remaster for Revelations. Capcom already did this exact same thing four years ago for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Who is this new release for? Who wanted a second HD remaster of this game? It’s not like this is an incredibly old and obscure game. It’s an entry in a popular series which you can still find at just about any GameStop, just sitting there in the under $20 bin.

What is Capcom thinking? Did they look at the disappointment caused by Konami ceasing production of new Silent Hill games and decide that they wanted to top that? Who knows. All I can say for sure is that I, for one, am no longer as optimistic for the future of the Resident Evil series as I was six months ago.